


Unknown Title

by Robert (seeye)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Blood and Violence, M/M, Military, Multi, Outer Space, Science Fiction, Space Opera, unrealistic physics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 06:00:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26468359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seeye/pseuds/Robert
Summary: After escaping from a sudden and ruthless attack on his homeworld, James is on a mission. Find his family. Find out who attacked. Find out what they want. And find out who this mysterious captain *really* is.A military science fiction adventure filled with space battles and cliches. What more could you ask for?
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character, Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Kudos: 1





	1. Introduction

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all! I'm in the process of writing my first piece of non fan-fiction work. I do not have an editor or even anyone to read over this (which is why I'm posting it!), so despite my best attempts I'm sure there will be plenty of grammatical errors and awkward phrasing. Please bear with me. Any constructive feedback is certainly appreciated! It is _in-progress_ with no estimated completion date. Fair warning!

* * *

Communication collapses. Ships stop appearing. Jump gates go dark.  
Your neighbors – your source of food, trade, and culture – disappear in an instant.  
Riots. Starvation. Chaos.  
How could we ever come back from it?

####  The Folly of Empire, 2870 CE

* * *

### Introduction

“Wake up, honey.”  


James felt a shake on his shoulder, but stubbornly kept his eyes closed.  


“Come on, Jamie. We’re having brunch today! Your dad made eggs benedict.”  


James slowly blinked, getting a blurry look at his mom standing over him. She smiled and rolled her eyes, clearly used to his slovenly ways.  


“Mom,” James whined, pulling the blankets over his head. “It’s too early.”  


“Honey, it’s almost eleven.”  


There was a long pause from the bed, as James’ mom stood with her arms over her chest.  


“Oh.” A face finally reemerged from the tangle of sheets. “Give me ten minutes.”  


After brushing his teeth and a quick shower, James ran down the stairs of his parent’s modest home to chaos. His father was in the kitchen, pans and bowls strewn everywhere with various half used ingredients still inside. The family dog, Molly, was hot on his heels. Per usual, she was waiting for any opportunistic clumsiness. His two younger sisters sat at the kitchen table, a physical tug of war over a shirt in mid progress. His older brother, sans girlfriend for once, was arguing with someone on his Pad. Probably the girlfriend.  


His mom, bless her, entered the chaos with practiced ease. After a quick stop to kiss her husband on the cheek, she walked to the table and pulled the shirt out from between the twins. She laid it over her shoulders like a scarf.  


“This one is mine,” She said with a sly grin.  


The two girls groaned in unison.  


“I wanted it for choir auditions!” Bella, the youngest by fifteen minutes, sulked.  


After shrugging, the matriarch walked to Brian, James’ older brother, and plucked the Pad from his hand. Brian narrowed his eyes in response, only to be met by a steely gaze. He could not be too mad, though. His leave was too short for that.  


“Brunch is ready. Girls clear the table. Brian, can you please let the dog out? James, help your father bring over the food.”  


“Aye, aye, ma’am,” Brian said with a sarcastic salute.  


After settling down, the family sat at the table enjoying their Sunday brunch. James let his eyes wander across the scene with a small grin. The twins were in a vicious argument with their father about the best color – blue was the right answer, of course. Their mother and Brian were laughing at how pitiful Molly looked, sitting next to Brian with expectant eyes. She knew the best mark, after all.  


Suddenly James heard a rumble. Confused, his head shot in a circle looking for the source. The television was on, an action movie set loud enough to shake the house with every explosion of bass.  


“You have any plans today, kid? Not much left of the day after all.” His father asked with a wink, bringing him into the conversation.  


“Enjoying my summer break, dad. I might meet up with friends later.”  


“Alright Jamie. Just remember that you have to get up.”  


Confused, James looked up from the food to his father. He could not seem to focus on him, as if a shade were covering his dad’s face. His dad’s lips kept moving.  


“You have to get up.”  


Why did dad’s voice sound so strange? It was as if a fog was muffling his hearing, his vision. Why couldn’t he lift his hands? The fork he was holding dropped to the ground.  


Another rumble sounded.  


“Please, get up!”  


A piercing wail broke through the fog.  


With a start, James sat up once again. He was in his bed. At home? No, at school. Someone was shaking his shoulder.  


It was Bethany, the other Resident Assistant from down the hall, still wearing her underclothes.  


“James, get the fuck up right now!”  


James stared blankly at her in confusion. A quick glance at his Pad on the table next to him said it was early morning, too early even for morning people like her.  


There was another loud report, and the room started shaking. Dust fell from the ceiling, confusing him even more.  


“The city is under attack!” She shouted, grabbing his shoulder more insistently.  


“What do you –” He started, before glancing to the middle of his window, where the curtains left just a glance of the outside world. It was streaming in light, as if it were midday and the not the middle of the night.  


The wail sounded again. A long low note followed by a higher one. A siren.  


James finally stood on shaky legs, walking to the window and pulling a curtain back. Bethany cautiously followed, coming to stand next to him.  


“Oh my God. What’s happening?”  


Bethany did not have an answer, and just whispered a question of her own.  


“What do we do?”


	2. Red Night

* * *

Wicklough, Wicklough System  
Population: Approximately 60 million planetside, 1 million in-system  
Government: Unified Parliamentary System  
Main Exports: Electronics, chemical fertilizer, raw material  
Main Imports: Foodstuffs, ship components, munitions

####  Universal Reference Book, W-Z, updated 2792 CE

* * *

### Chapter One: Red Night

James’ fear was momentarily overridden by frustration, as he banged his Pad on the nightstand. It would not connect with his family, and there were no updates from the University. Just a vague warning message about being disconnected from the network.

Chancing a glance out the window one more time, he saw streams of students from the other dorms starting to appear on the lawn below. They seemed to be heading away from the city center, towards the outskirts of the capitol. Away from the fires. Towards the spaceport.

“We have to get everyone moving,” James said, directed both at Bethany and for his own reassurance. “We’ll head to the spaceport. They could be evacuating.”

“Got it. Should we grab any supplies?” Bethany asked, surprisingly quick on her feet.

James thought for a moment. It was only a few miles.

“No, it’ll only slow us down.”

She nodded and ran to get proper clothes from her own room.

James walked out into the hall, half expecting to see it empty from the number of people he had seen outside.

But the younger students were there, waiting for instructions in their pajamas. Most were paused just outside the doors to their rooms, while some doors were stubbornly shut.

“You,” James pointed at one of the few sophomores on his floor. “Take a friend and knock on every door as loud as you can. Make sure everyone is awake and ready to leave.” At that, the other students started to mumble. Should they leave?

“Do you think it’s the Federation?” One asked.

“Does it matter?” Another responded.

James looked over his shoulder, back into the room that had been his home for the past four years one last time. As he was looking, a huge flash of light abruptly occupied the entire window, and seconds later the sound of a loud explosion washed over the building, causing it to shake even more violently. James caught himself on the doorway, though many of the kids around him were knocked over.

“Let’s go!” He shouted, “We have to move now. Put on shoes and leave everything else!”

Just a minute later, he was leading a line of freshmen and sophomore students down the main stairway of their dormitory. Bethany took up the rear. Every floor they passed already seemed abandoned. The desk at the front door, normally occupied by campus security, was empty too.

Pushing through the outer door, James could not help but pause and stare once more at the scene before him. But this time it was not a dream.

The horizon was glowing blood red, as if hell itself had been unleashed overnight.

Hundreds of people were running around the quad, bathed in the eerie light. Most going the way he wanted to travel as well. Some running into buildings. Others shouting out for missing friends, lost in their fear.

Periodic flashes of bright white explosions popped into existence in the distance, seemingly at random but with no signs of stopping. Bombs? Missiles? He didn’t know. Each was followed by a loud report.

Bursts of light shot up from the ground into the night from dozens of locations around the city. Lasers and ballistic tracers were reaching into the sky, seeking to protect the ground below from whatever ordinance was incoming.

White flares hung suspended hundreds of feet in the air, casting strong shadows that constantly moved around in a demented dance.

James heard several loud roars and craned his neck even further upwards. He saw countless dark specks moving against the stars like gnats, seemingly random motions dictated by nothing but the intrinsic code of the universe. But it wasn’t random. Even as he watched, one of the shapes maneuvered itself behind another, and tracers shot from its nose and into the other craft.

For a fraction of a second, its death lit up the night sky as well.

As he continued to stare, transfixed, another dark shape whizzed past alarmingly close. Searing heat and wind flew in its path. The shape slammed into the library across the main lawn, exploding just a few hundred meters away and knocking James off his feet.

One of the students who had paused behind him knelt and helped James to stand.

The library was virtually gone. In its place fire and smoke shot upwards. Flaming debris slammed into the lawn and the buildings closer to their group. Glass shattered onto the ground. Concrete chunks fell like rain.

No longer were there orderly lines of students heading towards the spaceport; now it was a free-for-all.

Groups of people ran past him, elbowing James as he stood there. His own students joined the fray, rushing through the door of their dorm building and into the night’s madness. A tree to his right was engulfed in flames, a pyre that no one even bothered to gawk at.

Bethany soon rushed past him as well, grabbing his hand as she went.

“Let’s go, James!”

He could barely hear her over the ringing in his ears.

They ran hand in hand, feet pounding the walkways as they went through campus and towards the main roadway out of the city. As they exited the main quad, James saw a dark shape on the ground next to a small crater of churned dirt in the normally pristine grass. The pair slowed to look as they got closer.

It was a person.

At least, a half of a person.

Everything from the bottom of the torso down was an unrecognizable tangle of flesh and bone. Flashes of light continued to illuminate the lawn, and James was morbidly curious who the person had been. The body was face down, so he couldn’t tell. Even the back of their skull was covered in dark bloody patches.

They both stared. It was the first death they had ever seen outside of a funeral.

Another explosion went off, sounding closer than the rest of the background noise.

This time it was James who pulled Bethany along and back towards the throngs of people running away.  
Sirens continued to wail through the night.

A massive river of humanity wound its way down the main elevated highway towards the outskirts of Arklough, capitol of New Wicklough. Where automated vehicles normally sped at hundreds of kilometers per hour, huddled refugees shuffled slowly. 

Explosions from the city center lit the sky in near continuous flashes, illuminating the backs of the people in front of James and Bethany.

Bethany pulled on the sleeve of his night shirt. “Look!” She whispered, as if being too loud would attract the attention of their mysterious enemy.

James leaned over, to see where she pointed on the opposite side of the highway. A mass of metal was crashing through abandoned automobiles in the distance, getting closer and closer to their position. In what seemed like no time at all a seemingly endless column of tanks was streaming past, heading further into the city.

“Contender IV’s.” James said, nodding. Heavy Battle Tanks. Max road speed of 110 kilometers per hour. A huge 140mm main gun. Various other machine guns and anti-projectile systems. The thickest armored, heaviest hitting, largest tanks Wicklough possessed.

“How do you know that?” Bethany yelled over the rumble of the column passing by.

“My brother is in the Armored Corps.”

“Do you think he’s in one of those?”

“Probably not," James answered shortly. "He was training in Skerries last I heard.”

He was not in the mood to talk. Neither were many others, from the shell-shocked expressions of the strangers around them.

Another roar, somehow louder than the behemoths racing past mere meters way, caught his attention and he craned his neck upwards to see. A plane! It was getting closer and closer to the highway, diving down, coming straight towards them... The tank guns, having sophisticated sensor suites, suddenly pivoted. Machine gun fire lit the air around them and several people screamed from the onslaught of noise. Panic spread through the crowd as people tried to run. Forwards, backwards, wherever seemed most logical in that split second.

“Get down!” James yelled, pushing Bethany to the ground as he fell on top of her.

The bomber released its ordinance into the highway behind them, a missile hanging in the air for what seemed like eternity but was whizzing towards them at unbelievable speed. The shockwave of the explosion pushed over the pair in a rush of deadly super-heated air. Feeling hot and sore, the pair laid there while groans started sounding from the injured around them.

James slowly got up, wearily glancing around them. No sign of the aircraft. Several bodies lay mere feet away, victims of flying chunks of concrete and other shrapnel from the destroyed road. The line of the tanks on the other side of the barrier had stopped, no longer able to drive past. The crew from the closest vehicle dismounted and approached them.

“You guys alright?” The uniformed woman asked as she hopped over the highway’s barrier. A sergeant from her uniform.

“I think so,” Bethany answered for them, shaking herself off. She coughed from the dust and smoke in the air.

“Then you two get moving. We'll administer first aid here. Get to the spaceport, the Prime Minister has ordered a planetwide evacuation.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Standard disclaimer! I'm in the process of writing my first piece of non fan-fiction work. I do not have an editor or even anyone to read over this (which is why I'm posting it!), so despite my best attempts I'm sure there will be plenty of grammatical errors and awkward phrasing. Please bear with me. Any constructive feedback is certainly appreciated! It is _in-progress_ with no estimated completion date. Fair warning!


	3. Guardian Angel

* * *

At the very least we knew where we were from, and we knew what we were working towards.  
So many didn't even have that.

####  The Folly of Empire, 2870 CE

* * *

### Chapter Two: Guardian Angel

By the time the huge spaceport stretched into the horizon, it was clear to James there was no plan for the huge influx of people trying to escape the battle behind them. The steady stream of refugees had gotten thicker and thicker. Here and there he noticed families and individuals stopped on the sides of the road, abandoning any pretense of hope. Some of those around them had full bags of luggage. Others, like themselves, were in underwear and night clothes.

Sporadic gunfire erupted ever closer. Streamers shot into the air, futilely chasing enemy craft. The past few hours had been a relentless barrage of bombs, missiles and fire. As James and Bethany joined the long line to get through the outer wall of the spaceport complex, a steady stream of ships of all shapes and sizes was passing overhead and up through the atmosphere.

“Are those ships safe?” Bethany wondered to herself. It was a fair thought – one James had already had as well. Would the attackers just shoot down any ships fleeing the fighting?

A man in line ahead of them heard the question and turned around to face them.

“The navy held the orbitals over the port here, but it meant sacrificing the rest of the planet. They,” he paused, motioning upwards into the air with a spiteful gesture, “have free reign over every other part of Wicklough.”

“How do you know that?” James asked, curiously.

“My wife was an assistant to the defense minister,” he said, eyes suddenly cast down. “It was the plan all along against a stronger invading force. It’s how I knew it was safe to come here.”

James examined the man more quickly. He couldn’t have been more than a few years older than James. “Was?” He asked, afraid of the answer.

“Parliament was the first place they bombed. My wife called me on the Pad to let me know an unknown force appeared in-system a few hours ago and to get out here. It was the last thing I heard from her.” He paused, wiping his eyes before continuing in a whisper, “I keep hoping she’ll show up and know what to do. I thought about going downtown to look for her…”  
The man trailed off as silent tears streamed down his dust-covered face. Bethany approached him carefully and pulled the stranger into a sympathetic hug.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

After a few minutes describing their desperate escape from the University, the trio settled on mundane small talk to distract themselves. The line they were standing in had barely moved a meter.

“Hey, what’s your name?” James asked, suddenly aware of just how little he knew of the man in front of them.

“Theodore Breckenridge. Most people call me Theo.”

“Theo then,” James said with a tight smile.

“Theo,” Bethany started, “do you… do you know anything about the people attacking us?”

Theodore’s eyes suddenly shifted from side to side. He leant in, whispering to his new companions. “I knew more than I probably should,” he confided, motioning them closer. “My wife was remarkably busy over the past few months. All very, very quiet. She said it was something – a project – that government would use to win the next election.”

“What do you mean?” James asked, confused as to how anything Wicklough was doing could warrant an attack.

“An ace in the hole. Something that would propel us into a powerful trade position. She didn’t want to tell me initially, but last week we got drunk together for the first time in forever and she let it slip.” He paused, taking a deep breath. “They were repairing the Jump Gate.”

_CCS Minnow, Wicklough System_

“Captain, they have successfully destroyed all armed orbitals except over the capitol’s spaceport. It looks like they’re using that sector to evacuate as many civilians as they can. Landings have continued to be sporadic.” The report wasn’t strictly necessary – they could all see the slaughter happening in real time, after all – but it was their job to make sure nothing was missed.

Captain Derek Westberg nodded at his communications officer. Standing over his officers’ shoulders, he glanced around the small bridge of the converted freighter. It had just four stations arrayed in a haphazard semi-circle in front of him, with an honest-to-gods large viewport facing the bow. Communications and sensors, weapons, damage control, and navigation were always manned per his orders, running simulations and taking on additional tasks in any downtime.

A single table with a transparent screen hanging overhead acted as the tactical map. The image of space around _Minnow_ sat roughly in the middle of the bridge, behind the loose collection of duty stations. Its smooth and polished surface was a far cry from the rougher edges of the original deck. Symbols and trajectories representing other ships buzzed around the screen, as intelligence officers sitting in their own office towards the center of the old freighter tried to make sense of the panicked traffic of the New Wicklough system. The captain’s chair was bolted off to one side in the back of the bridge, in view of the tactical map but annoyingly isolated enough not to have line of sight to every other station. The space was rounded out by a couple of spare crash seats bolted onto the rear wall opposite the captain’s chair, with the hatch out of the bridge between them. It was a far cry from the dozen plus officers and NCOs that would run the polished and symmetrical bridge of a true Camrian warship.

Derek heard the sharp stomp of a pair of marines’ feet coming to attention, as his first officer stepped past the bridge’s guard and into the cramped space. His executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Andrea Jones, approached him and stopped short at parade rest. “I am ready to relieve you sir.”

“Good morning, Miss Jones. First watch has been relatively quiet – the newcomers have been content to remain in high orbit. I trust your inspection went well?”

“Yes, Captain. All stations appear to be operating at full efficiency.”

“Very well. I am ready to be relieved.”

“I relieve you, sir.”

Captain Westberg looked around the relatively small bridge, wondering not for the first time if the ceremony he maintained was worth it. Maybe he was so strict on formality because he was so young for his rank. “I stand relieved. Attention in the bridge, Lieutenant Commander Jones has the deck.”

“This is Lieutenant Commander Jones, I have the deck.” After exchanging salutes, Derek stepped back to the rear of the bridge.

The Captain lingered for a moment, watching the dots on the tactical map as Andrea continued to read the log. He hated watching the invasion happening before their very eyes and doing nothing. Even if it wasn’t a planet of the Camrian Alliance, people were dying. Civilians were dying. All to an unknown. They were constantly intercepting communications of people trapped in rubble, of police stations being bombarded, of debris crashing into civilian buildings. Squaring his shoulders, Derek resolved that this affront would not go unpunished. Even if all he could do for now was standby and watch.

Derek did not go far. Stepping off the bridge, and after a quick salute to the marines, he took the first door on the right. After entering his ready room and stepping past the small conference table, he took the seat at his desk with a sigh. There was one port-facing porthole, from which he could just see the large nacelle which held one of their Epstein engines. The other was identically placed on the starboard side.

They had come so far. Humanity had crawled its way out of their self-imposed darkness and reached for the stars again, only to devolve into the kinds of regional petty squabbles that had led to the first Dark Age. It was a miracle they had spaceflight at all. Derek knew that Camria and the surrounding systems had been relatively well-off. The Alliance had grown in the past century to a dozen systems, and a dozen more trade partners like the planet they were now observing. The planet that was being attacked 

When he had taken over the _Minnow_ , he knew life wasn’t going to be easy. She was a spy ship, after all. After the Alliance had learned New Wicklough was planning on activating a long-dormant Jump Gate in secret, Command knew there were risks. So here he was, observing and under strict orders not to endanger the ship or crew. Early in his career as an officer, Derek had never dreamed he would be commanding a retrofitted freighter of all things. A destroyer, maybe even a cruiser someday. But not an old freighter.

However, it was not a bad command. Derek had been able to handpick his command staff, as well as much of the crew; it did not need much of one, as a civilian freighter would normally operate with minimal hands. Anything less invasive than a boarding party would see her as nothing more than a civilian cargo hauler, albeit one with an unusually high energy output. What a boarding party might find would be an unpleasant surprise – for them. A large portion of the cargo bays, normally depressurized as there was no reason to maintain air and gravity in an unoccupied space, contained newly built barracks and other crew facilities.

The _Minnow_ ’s original civilian crew numbered around a dozen. Derek currently had around thirty spacers – the engineers, navigators, ops, mess staff and so on one would normally find on a freighter but supplemented by a large contingent of intelligence officers supporting the ship’s recon mission. The other element on-board was also the one standing diligent watch behind Derek’s back just outside the bridge. A full company of marines sat in the converted cargo spaces located beneath the ship’s original crew decks – two of whom were always guarding the bridge, carbines in hand. An entire platoon were Marine Raiders – Special Forces ready to support their recon mission however needed. While _Minnow_ was nowhere near as big as the largest superfreighters trawling this area of space, any company that wanted to make money in interstellar shipping needed to move goods at scale – so there was space to spare in her boxy design.

Of the three original main cargo bays, two had been converted into multi-deck crew space, with room for an entire additional company of marines if needed. The two smaller bays at the rear of the ship, normally reserved for holding the freighter’s own supplies, had been converted into launch bays for the _Minnow_ ’s fighters and shuttles. Designed to be depressurized at a moment’s notice, the sterns of the two bays had large cargo doors that were normally meant to facilitate loading and offloading – large tracks could bring cargo from the stern loading doors all the way to the aft cargo bay. Instead the exterior door to the port bay would now open to two Marine Heavy Assault Landing Shuttles – MHALS – or Hail Mary’s as their crew fondly called them. The starboard bay held four S-170 “Jaguar” Starfighters. Launching her craft was not nearly as seamless a process as on a carrier or the dedicated flight deck of a cruiser. However, her crew perfected emergency departures and landings through countless hours of drilling. _Minnow_ may not have much in the way of traditional weaponry, but she certainly was not toothless.

“Captain,” the intercom buzzed, interrupted his musings. “We are receiving a video feed being broadcast on all channels by the system government.” There was pause. “We… have a problem.”

“Roger that. I’m on my way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not beta-read, new writer, yada yada. Feedback (of the kind variety) encouraged!


End file.
